


Tony and Mr. Fornell

by I May Age Regress (shnuffeluv)



Series: Gibbs' Family [15]
Category: NCIS
Genre: Age Play, Finding Out Secrets, Gen, Markers, Non-Sexual Age Play, Surprises, Unexpected Visitors, blocks, toy cars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 03:27:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10733193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shnuffeluv/pseuds/I%20May%20Age%20Regress
Summary: It's been a while, so have a short oneshot about Fornell walking in on Tony and Gibbs.





	Tony and Mr. Fornell

Tony was almost asleep on Papa's lap when he heard the front door creak open. The front door never creaked open, at least not when Tony was there. He thought he had imagined the sound when a voice called into the house, "Gibbs?"

In a second, Tony's blood had turned to ice and he sat up from Papa's chest like a shot. His pacifier fell out of his mouth, leaving a trail of drool down his chin, and he was overjoyed for once about Papa forcing him to go to the bathroom earlier.

The man sat up behind Tony, obviously waking up from a light doze. "Tony? Something wrong?" he mumbled.

Tony looked over towards the entrance of the house and found none other than Fornell standing there, gawking. The boy covered his face in his hands, red from ear to ear. Papa shifted on the couch, and must have seen Fornell too, because he greeted the man with a, "Tobias."

"I'm gonna need an explanation here," Fornell said, voice strained.

Tony peeked out from behind his fingers at one of the last men on Earth he wanted to see while little standing there in front of them on the welcome mat. He lowered his fingers a fraction upon the discovery that the man didn't seem remotely angry or disgusted, just confused beyond belief.

Papa touched Tony's hands lightly, and Tony took them off his face. The man offered him his pacifier and he took it in his mouth, not willing to give up his comfort for any dignity he might have left. At this point, it couldn't be much. His hair was a mess, he was covered below the mouth in drool, and he was wearing Papa's old NIS sweatshirt along with pajama pants because dinner got messy. Still, Tony watched Fornell in case he tried anything, like taking a picture.

At this point, Tony looked over to Papa to find the man looking him up and down expectantly. Tony frowned. "What?" he asked.

Papa sighed and shook his head. "Nothing kiddo. Thought you'd like to explain."

Tony pulled his arms around himself and he shook his head.

Papa gave a half-smirk, the one that told Tony he had done something adults found funny or that he was going to get a rare treat. "Well, I have to explain things to Tobias then. And I know you could probably fall asleep on my lap, but he needs somewhere to sit that isn't my armchair. So I'm giving you permission to play for an extra half-hour, sound good?"

Tony's eyes widened and he nodded eagerly, getting off the couch to grab an armful of his toy cars so he could line them up on the floor.

Fornell moved into the house at this point and sat on the couch, looking at Papa expectantly. "Still need an explanation."

"Tony age regresses to deal with stress," Papa said. "Due to some past trauma, this is the best coping mechanism he has. He's not very good at looking after himself like this, though, so I do the looking after for him. That's about it."

Tony shoved the cars across the floor, starting to put them in a race. They all stopped more or less against the couch, except for one which ricocheted off of a shoe. Tony crawled forward to grab it but wasn't faster than the shoe's owner. Tony looked up and felt his ears go red when Fornell looked back down at him. The man looked at the car, looked at Tony, looked at the car again, and slowly offered the car back. "This yours?" he offered.

With a nod, Tony took the car back. He sat down where he was and rolled the cars around that were within his reach.

"So you just make sure he doesn't kill himself?" Fornell asked Papa.

"More or less. I also make food if he comes over. He's the reason there's more than one TV dinner in the fridge nowadays."

Fornell nodded sagely. "So...what do you get out of this?"

Tony paused in pushing the cars around. That was a good question. What _did_  Papa get from letting Tony sit here and play?

"Satisfaction," Papa said with a shrug. "Second chance."

Fornell looked away and Tony frowned. The man was always so serious. Maybe he could do something to get Fornell to lighten up. Tony placed one of the cars on Fornell's pant leg and began to push it up until it was at the man's knee, before driving off onto the couch. "Hey, kid, do I _look_  like an on-ramp?" Fornell asked.

Tony looked up, and he could see a glint of amusement in the man's eye. Tony grinned innocently and nodded. "Yeah."

Fornell narrowed his eyes. "Oh, yeah? Then how am I supposed to do anything? On-ramps can't move around, you know."

"Then don't move around," Tony said with a shrug.

Fornell lifted up the leg that Tony hadn't run his car over and pushed on Tony's chest until the boy fell backwards. "Doesn't he get to be a handful?" Fornell asked Papa.

"Not too often," Papa replied as Tony sat up, only for Fornell to knock him back again. The boy giggled. "Only if he has too much sugar or he's been in a mood all day. Both of those things can lead to tantrums."

Fornell stopped pushing Tony back to the ground and looked over at Papa in surprise. "He has tantrums?"

Papa laughed. "Oh, yeah. Over tiny things, too. He's thrown a fit because I didn't make fish sticks for him when he demanded it."

"You're joking, right? I'm being punked?" Fornell asked.

Tony, realizing that no one was going to engage with him near the couch, crawled to his toy chest and pulled out a thick sketch pad designed for kids that Papa got him, along with a metal lunchbox filled to the brim with crayons, colored pencils, gel pens, and markers. He pulled out several markers, and settled on a dark gray, which he used to create two rectangles. Maybe he could get Fornell to smile by drawing him a picture.

"I'm serious, Tobias," Papa said with a chuckle. "He's every bit dramatic a child as he is as an adult."

"That's..." Fornell paused. "Actually, no, I can see it."

Tony took a pink marker and made a circle above to two gray rectangles, before taking a red one and drawing a scowl in the circle. He grinned. Fornell _would_  look serious, even playing with kids. He drew two thick rectangle-legs underneath the top rectangles and two circles for shoes. Fornell was now drawn on the paper. How should he draw himself...?

Papa was laughing at Fornell's comment. Tony felt only slight offense, because it was true. He did have a track record of drama. "Yeah, he's definitely a handful. Wouldn't have it any other way, though."

"Does anyone else know about this?" Fornell asked. "Don't want you to get reported or anything."

"Besides Tony, you, and I the only people who know about him like this are behind bars, and they didn't know I was his caregiver. We don't want to give people the wrong idea."

Tony finished coloring himself in a green shirt and jeans and nodded to himself as he started on the grass. He definitely didn't want to be moved from Papa's team at work, and it wasn't like he was playing favorites with him. If anything, Papa was harder on him because of it. Not that Tony minded, he knew he could tell Papa to take it easy when he needed a bit of a break, and he was a way better investigator because of the pressure.

Fornell stood from the couch and Tony looked up as he approached. "He's good to you, isn't he? I'd hate to have to kill him, but I will if he isn't treating you right."

Tony grinned. "He's okay..."

"Only okay? I better get out the brass knuckles!"

"Okay, okay! He's better than okay! He's the best Papa I've ever had!" Tony exclaimed. "You don't hafta hurt him!"

Fornell chuckled. "What're you working on there?"

Tony looked down and ripped the paper out of the sketch pad. "'S you and me. Playing," he said.

"Why am I frowning, then?" Fornell asked. "You seem to forget I have a daughter of my own, just about your age!"

Tony shrugged. "You're always super duper serious." He didn't feel the need to elaborate, so he handed the paper over. "'S for you."

Fornell looked shocked, but took the paper. "Oh...thank you, uh, Tony."

Tony grinned and reached into his toy box. "Wanna play with me?"

"Maybe for a little bit, Gibbs said something about your bedtime being soon, so let's do something quick."

Tony pulled out a dozen blocks. "Let's build something! That's usually super fast!"

Fornell looked back to the couch and Papa nodded at him. "Uh...okay. What should we build?"

Tony shrugged. "I dunno until I've built it," he said. "But that's the fun part! It can never be built bad because you're not trying to build anything specific!"

"I guess you have a point," Fornell said, amused. He took a block and placed it between them. "That can be our base."

Tony nodded eagerly, and added another block. Pretty soon, they had a tower to be trifled with. Tony and Fornell were both admiring their architectural marvel, when Tony did the one thing that always got him sent to bed: he yawned.

"Okay, kiddo, I think you've stayed up late enough for one night," Papa said.

"Nooooo," Tony whined. "Wanna stay up longer."

"You have work tomorrow, kiddo. It's best if you go to bed."

"Your papa has a point, kid," Fornell added. "I should probably get going as well. Can't even remember why I came here."

Tony whined more, as Fornell started taking blocks off their tower. "It's okay, kid, you'll probably be seeing me real soon, knowing the jurisdiction wars Gibbs starts."

"Really?" Tony asked hopefully.

"Mm-hm," Fornell confirmed. "So go to bed, all right? We'll see each other real soon."

"Okay..." Tony sighed. "Night, Mr. Fornell."

Tony walked up the stairs but stayed close enough to them to hear Papa's and Fornell's good-byes. As Fornell was leaving, he said, “I knew DiNozzo was a little off, but I didn’t realize he was DiNutso." And then he was gone.

Tony went to bed that night without much complaint afterwards, and he didn't worry about the possibility of Fornell tattling on them. One look at his smile as he left told Tony he was never going to tell a soul about this, not even his daughter.


End file.
